


The Milestones in Our Fingerprints

by Blame Canada (OneHitWondersAnonymous)



Category: South Park
Genre: Childhood Sweethearts, Long-Term Relationship(s), Love, M/M, POV Tweek Tweak, Present Tense, Short & Sweet, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, seriously it's just fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-13 02:07:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16008050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneHitWondersAnonymous/pseuds/Blame%20Canada
Summary: Tweek isn't sure what's wrong, but he knows something is off. The State Fair has been their tradition for years and years and years, and yet Tweek finds himself lost in a familiar place. A conversation on his favorite ride might help find him.G for sweet fluff. Submission for publication in the Book of Love Creek fanzine. Creek. One-shot.





	The Milestones in Our Fingerprints

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys, and welcome to the little ficlet I wrote for the Book of Love Creek fanzine!! I had a great time writing this and was really dying to share it with you. I worked hard on it- especially considering the 2k word count limit! Nonetheless, I hope these lovely little sweethearts give you cavities, despite its brevity. Enjoy!

“What do you want to do first?” Craig asks, but it’s somewhat of an unnecessary question. Craig knows what they want to do, knows that they do the same thing every year, and yet he asks. Strangers weave around them in droves near the entrance, and he is studying the map they offer at the ticket gate. It is late summer in Colorado and the day is unusually sticky, in preparation for rain that’s sure to hit them by the time they’re in the barns—their inevitable first stop. Craig holds out his hand, Tweek knits their fingers together, and they start walking in relative silence. The state fair is controlled chaos around them.

They ignore the vendors and loop through the barns to look at the prize animals, and sure enough, the gentle pattering sound of rain begins to drip into Tweek’s ears from the rooftop. The creatures here pay it no mind, unaware of the change in weather outside that has people retreating to the buildings with their coats pulled over their heads. Tweek is envious of that, that ability to exist without concern for life’s constant movement, until he remembers that this rabbit is stuck in a cage much too small to be comfortable and probably will be for its entire life. Stagnancy is sad, in this case, and he feels bad for even considering it to be preferable to the life he leads outside of that cage, with Craig’s clammy hand and wet pamphlet to keep him company. Still, he shivers, and something is off.

“You seem upset,” Craig comments, suddenly, amid the silence that had fallen between them while they observed the art on display in the building with extra tall ceilings.

“I’m not,” Tweek replies, but as soon as the words leave him, he’s not so sure. He realizes with some discomfort that he’s hardly smiled all day, so he puts one on to appease Craig, who returns it without losing the worry in his eyes. As soon as Craig stops looking at him, he sighs. Words feel stuck in his throat, but all jumbled up so that he can’t figure out what he wants to say. He follows him outside and watches the feathered split-ends of his hair catch fire in the sunset.

The air around them is crisp now, crisper even the higher they go, and it scratches at Tweek’s cheeks like little claws. He shivers and Craig moves a little closer, instinctively, his bony thigh pressed against Tweek’s thicker one to lend what little heat he can give. The movement makes the seat rock and Tweek grabs for the handlebars, gripping them with a quiet squawk. The metal is still wet from the rain. Craig silently pries one hand from the chilled metal to wrap it up in his own, and the color returns to his knuckles. The touch of Craig’s hand calms him entirely, and he lets his other arm drop at his side, sighing lightly.

“Craig,” he starts, and Craig grunts at him to acknowledge that he’s heard him. “Doesn’t this feel weird?” His heart is pounding as he asks, afraid he’s made the wrong choice in asking. He worries that it’s rude, or it’s just him, or both, maybe more. Craig squeezes his hand and looks at him. The confusion is evident in his glance.

“What?”

“I don’t know,” Tweek tries, frustration threading his brows tighter, “this. Doesn’t this whole place feel, mm, strange?”

Craig blinks at him, and at the same time, their seat gets hiked up another position higher into the sky. A new batch of wind scrabbles at his skin and makes it itchy. Craig doesn’t look away. “I don’t know what you mean. It feels like the state fair.”

Tweek tries not to let his frustration get to him, but it’s hard. He lets out a little groan as he tries to articulate his thoughts. Craig is forever patient, forever too good for him. “I-I just mean that, it feels different, you know? It’s not the same as when we were younger.” Tweek sighs at the admittance, and drops his free elbow down on the handlebar to plop his face into his palm. “Except everything  _ is _ the same, every time. We still come, though! We come every year, and I, and I just don’t know, man. It’s the same. Why do we still come every year?”

This seems to give Craig something to chew on, because he’s silent for a moment. His eyes don’t stray but they cloud over somewhat while he thinks, and he rubs his thumb over the back of Tweek’s hand. It sends another shiver down Tweek’s spine and Craig thinks it’s from the cold, but it’s not.

“Maybe,” he says, carefully, “it’s because we feel like we have to.”

Tweek huffs. “Of course we have to. We always do. Why, though?”

Craig begins to look frustrated too, and Tweek panics that it’s his fault, though he knows deep down that he’s just upset that he can’t say what he feels. These are the only moments Tweek feels like he can be patient back, so he sits silently, waits for him, for any sort of answer for why they’re at the state fair when it’s exactly the same every year and has been their whole lives. He looks ahead of him to scope out all the lights and moving pieces that touch the horizon at night when their seat reaches the very top of the wheel. Somehow, despite all his other exhausting fears, he has never been all that afraid of heights. His feet look small from where he looks down at them, the angle sharp and awkward.

“Because it’s something we’ve always done,” Craig finally replies, and Tweek jumps at the sudden sound of it, having gotten lost in his thoughts while waiting.

“I, well, I guess it is,” Tweek concedes. “It just feels like another—another thing we have to do. Another performance, or something. Like, we  _ have _ to go to the fair. We  _ have _ to. I don’t like that kind of—mm, that kind of  _ constraint!” _

Tweek is halfway to tugging on his hair or pulling at his eyebrow (whichever comes easier) when Craig speaks up. “Tweek,” he says, and it’s in the soft voice reserved only for him, except this time it sounds sullen, oddly melancholy. It snaps him to attention, and he looks at Craig to find worry in his gaze. One thing Tweek has always loved about Craig is the fact that his emotions move so slowly that he could narrate each one in a thousand words before the next took over. It made him easier to understand, once he figured that out. “Do you just not want to come next year?”

Tweek bites at his lip, scoping out the cracks in his skin with his tongue while he turns over Craig’s words in his head. He sighs, arriving at the conclusion that he’s still not broken Craig’s surface. “I… I guess I don’t.” He lets his shoulders hunch forward and his posture spell out everything for him—that he’s given up. “Shouldn’t I want to, though?”

“Well,” Craig starts, and then he stretches his arms up above him so that they reach for the stars, as close to them as they’ll get with the sky so clear and the ferris wheel so high. He makes a little noise along with the stretch that makes Tweek breathe a silent affectionate giggle through his nose. “The nice thing about our relationship is that we have about a million other things to do that mean something to us, we’ve been together long enough.”

Tweek glances at Craig, at his newly outstretched hand, always reaching for his, and he smiles while he takes it. “How many years?”

“Five, and four and a half months on Sunday,” Craig answers, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. He loves asking him that question because he always knows the exact answer, like he has some odd database deep inside his programming that shows a ticking clock adding up all the seconds that they’ve loved each other. It’s endearing and grounding.

The ferris wheel creaks and pulls them backwards, away from the very top but still high enough to get a good look out the sides of their seats. The lights are blinding in all directions, and the sounds of the carnival games and screaming, happy children are just a bit quieter up here. It’s a nice reprieve. If nothing else, Tweek will miss the ferris wheel if they don’t come next year.

“Would you miss it? If we decided not to come, I mean,” Tweek decides to ask, and Craig shrugs gently.

“No, not really.” He doesn’t say anything for a long while, long enough for their seat to lower another notch, before continuing his thought like he never left the first one. “I wouldn’t have anything to miss. I’m here because of you.” Tweek makes eye contact at that, and he sees the bright yellow bulbs of a flashing sign illuminated in his pupils. They make his eyes look wider and show the color in them clearly, a window left open for Tweek to explore.

“That’s so sappy,” Tweek teases, but a shove from Craig has their seat swinging again, and he’s reaching for the handlebar quickly before he feels like he might fling out. Craig is quick to catch him though, and snakes his arm around Tweek’s back so that it rests on his hip. There is warmth all around him.

“Maybe we’ll skip it next year, I dunno,” Tweek says, and he leans into Craig’s arms like he’s meant to be there. He thinks he is.

“We’ll see,” Craig muses, and Tweek hums—echoes him.

“We’ll see.”

The ferris wheel twists one last time so that they reach the exit gates, and they’re ushered off by a bored kid who looks aggressively unamused. They hop out of their chairs and back into the din of the fair, where voices carry over each other like threads in a blanket that covers their ears. Still, they are connected by their hands when not by their speech, and Tweek can feel a million words jump between their intertwined fingers like a super power. It’s something they’ve always had, and that he never wants to let go.

When they finally reach the field where Craig’s dad’s truck is parked what feels like miles away, the sounds dissipate so that the only thing between them is the crunching and sliding of their shoes over wet grass. He can faintly hear crickets, too, if he tries. The drive home is punctuated by low bass lines and slick, wet concrete, but no words. They just hold hands over the center console and talk by touch, telling each other that they don’t want to go home apart and that they won’t. Tweek texts his mom accordingly and sets his phone aside for the rest of the night.

If five years, four months and thirteen days taught Tweek anything, it’s that time moves him in ways he can’t always expect- but sometimes people move together, in steps forward that surprise them, but shape them. They’ve moved on from the performative years of their relationship, it’s true, clear in the secrets their fingers tell each other and the warm, familiar kisses shared in bed long after sundown. A place could never define them as they are now, Tweek realizes. The locations were permanently moved to their hearts instead of where their feet might carry them. They don’t need a state fair to say  _ ‘I love you.’ _

The ferris wheel will always be there, though, if they need it.


End file.
